Terrorism: The Politics of
Language

Noam Chomsky, 1986

excerpted from the book

Stenographers to Power

media and propaganda

David Barsamian interviews

Common Courage Press, 1992,
paper

p87
NC: The term "national interest" is commonly used as
if it's something good for us, and the people of the country are
supposed to understand that. So if a political leader says that
"I'm doing this in the national interest," you're supposed
to feel good because that's for you. However, if you look closely,
it turns out that the national interest is not E' defined as what's
in the interest of the entire population; it's what's in the interests
of small, dominant elites who happen to be able to command the
resources that enable them to control the state-basically, corporate-based
elites. That's what's called the "national interest."
And, correspondingly, the term "special interests" is
used in a very interesting related way to refer to the general
population. The population are called the "special interests"
and the corporate elite are called the "national interest";
so you're supposed to be in favor of the national interest and
against the special interests.

This became very clear in the last few
presidential campaigns. The Reagan administration is largely a
figment of the public relations industry, and the public relations
aspects of it, including control over language, are very striking-it's
a professional public relations outfit. It was interesting to
see how the choice of terms they use was carefully crafted. In
both the 1980 and 1984 elections, they identified the Democrats
as the "party of special interests," and that's supposed
to be bad, because we're all against the special interests. But
if you look closely and ask who were the special interests, they
listed them: women, poor people, workers, young people, old people,
ethnic minorities-in fact, the entire population. There was only
one group that was not listed among the special interests: corporations.
If you'll notice the campaign rhetoric, that was never a special
interest, and that's right, because in their terms that's the
national interest. So if you think it through, the population
are the special interests and the corporations are the national
interest, and since overtone's in favor of the national interest
and against the special interests, you vote for and support someone
who's against the population and is working for the corporations.
This is a typical case of the way the framework of thought is
consciously manipulated by an effective choice and reshaping of
terminology so as to make it difficult to understand what's happening
in the world. A very important function of the ideological institutions-the
media, the schools, and so on-is to prevent people from perceiving
reality, because if they perceived it they might not like it and
might act to change it, and that would harm privileged people
who control these things.

DB: Perhaps it's like George Orwell said
in his essay "Politics and the English Language," that
in our time political speech and writing is largely the "defense
of the indefensible."

NC: Yes, he gave interesting examples
which are now classic, like the term "pacification."
It is used for mass murder; thus we carried out "pacification"
in Vietnam. If you look at what the pacification programs were,
they were literally programs of mass murder to try to suppress
and destroy a resisting civilization population. Orwell wrote
long before Vietnam, but he already noted that pacification was
being used that way; by now it's an industry. Orwell had pointed
out early examples of this kind of usage. A standard example is
"defense." In the United States, up until 1947, we used
to have something called the "War Department." Since
1947, we haven't had a War Department; we've had a "Defense
Department." Anyone who had his head screwed on realized
in 1947 that we were not going to be involved in defense any more,
we were only going to be involved in war, and that's why the War
Department has to be renamed the Defense Department-because "defense"
means "aggression." By now this is a sophisticated operation.
It's the same with every term you can think of. Take the term
"conservative." Conservative is supposed to be a good
thing, and this is supposed to be a conservative administration.
A true conservative like, say, Robert Taft, would turn over in
his grave to see what's being called conservative. Everything
the conservatives have always fought against is being advanced
by this administration. This administration is in favor of extending
the power of the state and increasing the intervention of the
state in the economy. State power has increased faster under this
administration than under any since the Second World War. It's
also interested in protecting the state against its citizens,
cutting down access to the state, controlling thought, controlling
expression, attacking civil liberties, attacking individual rights.
It's the most lawless administration we've ever had. All of these
things are anathema to conservatives. Conservatives want the opposite
in every respect, so naturally they call the administration conservative,
and if you like it you're supposed to be conservative. These are
all ways of undermining the possibility of independent thought,
by eliminating even the tools that you can use to engage in it.

DB: It seems in recent years, certainly
starting in the 1970s, through the 1980s and for the foreseeable
future, the term "terrorism" has become a dominant issue,
a theme and focus for the media and politicians, I wonder if you
could talk about the word itself; it seems to have undergone a
curious transformation in the last couple of centuries.

It definitely has, it's a very interesting
case. The word "terrorism" came into general use at
the end of the 18th century, and it was then used to refer to
acts of violent states that suppressed their own populations by
violence. Terror was the action of a state against its own citizens.
That concept is of no use whatsoever to people in power, so, predictably,
the term has come to be changed. Now it's the actions of citizens
against states; in fact, the term "terrorism" is now
almost entirely used for what you might call "retail terrorism":
the terrorism of small, marginal groups, and not the terrorism
of powerful states. We have one exception to this: if our enemies
are involved in terrorism, then you can talk about "state
terrorism." So there are really two things that define terrorism.
First, it's done against states, not by states against their citizens,
and it's done by them, not us. So, for example, take Libya. Qaddafi
is certainly a terrorist. The latest edition of the Amnesty International
publication, Political Killings by Governments, lists Qaddafi
as a terrorist; he killed fourteen people, Libyans, mostly in
Libya, in the 1980s. There may be a handful of others, but even
taking the most extreme estimate it couldn't be more than several
dozen, probably less. That's terrorism, and he's therefore the
"Mad Dog of the Middle East" and the "King of International
Terrorism." That's because he meets our criteria: he's them,
not us, and the terrorism that one talks about is carried out
generally by small groups, not by one of our major states.

Let's compare it with El Salvador. In
the same years in which Libya killed maybe fourteen, maybe 20
people, mostly Libyans, the government of El Salvador slaughtered
about 50,000 people. Now that's not just terrorism, that's international
terrorism, because it was done by us. We instituted the government
as much as the Russians instituted the government in Afghanistan;
we created the army, a terrorist army; we supplied, organized
and directed it. The worst atrocities were carried out by American-trained
elite battalions fresh from their training. The U.S. Air Force
participated directly in coordinating bombing strikes-the terror
was not ordinary killing. Libyan terror is bad enough; they kill
people. But our terrorists first mutilate, torture, rape, cut
them to pieces-it's hideous torture, Pol Pot-style. That's not
called terrorism. El Salvador is not called a terrorist state.
Jose Napoleon Duarte who has presided over all this, who has perceived
his role from the beginning as ensuring that the murderers are
supplied with weapons, and that nothing will interfere with the
massacre which he knew was coming when he joined the military
junta-he's called a great liberal hero, and El Salvador is considered
a kind of magnificent triumph of democracy. Here's a major terrorist
state-Libya is a very, very minor terrorist state but we see it
the other way around, and the reason is because "terrorism"
is used for them, not us, and because in the case of E1 Salvador
it's plainly being done by a major state against its own citizens-in
fact a state that we established, a client state of the United
States. Therefore it can't be terrorism, by definition. This is
true in case after case. My book about it, Pirates and Emperors,
takes its title from a rather nice story by St. Augustine in his
City of God. St. Augustine describes a confrontation between King
Alexander the Great and a pirate whom he caught. Alexander the
Great asks the pirate, "How dare you molest the sea?"
The pirate turns to Alexander the Great and says, "How dare
you molest the whole world? I have a small boat, so I am called
a thief and a pirate. You have a navy, so you're called an emperor."
St. Augustine concludes that the pirate's answer was elegant and
excellent and that essentially tells the story. Retail terrorism
directed against our interests is terrorism; wholesale terrorism
carried out for our interests isn't terrorism.

The same is true in the Middle East region.
In case after case, this is the way the term is used, and very
effectively. In fact, it was very predictable that the Reagan
administration would take international terrorism to be the core
of its foreign policy, as it announced right off. The reason was
that the administration made it very clear that it was going to
be engaged in international terrorism on a massive scale, and
since it's going to be engaged in international terrorism, naturally,
in a good public relations directed world, you start off by saying
that you're opposed to international terrorism. That shifts attention
away from the crucial issue: that you're going to maximize international
terrorism.

DB: Why the tremendous fascination with
terrorism-the TV specials, the articles, the documentaries, the
symposia, the conferences, and on and on-is there something deeper
that's being touched by this?

NC: Oh, yes, very deep. It's very close
to the Reagan administration's domestic policies. It's important
to remember that the Reagan administration's policies are extremely
unpopular, and for obvious reasons. The polls show this very clearly;
on just about every major issue the public is strongly opposed
to the Reagan programs. Take, say, social spending vs. military
spending. When the question is asked in polls: Would you prefer
to have a decrease in welfare payments or in military spending?,
the overwhelming majority of the population supports social spending
and opposes military spending. In fact, much of the population
is quite willing to see taxes raised to improve social spending.
The same is true on just about every issue. On intervention abroad
(in other words, international terrorism, if we were to be honest),
the population is strongly against it, by large majorities. The
Reagan administration is for it. On the nuclear freeze, the public
is overwhelmingly in favor of it; the figure is something like
three to one. The administration is against it. And so on. As
you go down the line, every major policy program is unpopular.
This is a problem, of course; you've got to control the population.
There is a classic answer to this problem: you frighten them.

Let me just go back to another step of
the Reagan program which is even more obvious: an essential part
of the Reagan program was to try to transfer resources from the
poor to the rich. Now, that's going to be unpopular, and the attack
on social spending is a part of it. Much of the Reagan program
is turning an increasingly powerful state into a welfare state
for the rich. The military program is very largely for that purpose.
That's a forced public subsidy to advanced industry, again unpopular,
and you can't present it in these terms. What do you do? You have
to get the public lined up. They oppose your policies. There's
only one way to deal with this; every leader throughout history
has understood it. You've got to frighten them, make them think
their lives are at stake, that they've got to defend themselves,
and then they'll accept these programs that they despise or dislike
as an unfortunate necessity. How do you terrify people? Again,
there's a classic answer. you find some "Evil Empire"
that's threatening to destroy them. In our case, it's now the
Soviet Union; it used to be the Huns, before that, the British,
and so on. But since the Bolshevik revolution it's been the Soviet
Union that's threatening to destroy us. So that's the Evil Empire.
But here you run into a problem. Confrontations with the Evil
Empire are dangerous. That's a big, powerful state; it can fight
back, and you don't want to get involved with them because you
might get hurt. So what you have to do is have confrontations,
but not with the Evil Empire-too dangerous. The best way is ;to
have confrontations with groups that you designate as "proxies"
of the Evil Empire. What you try to do is to find essentially
defenseless countries or groups that can be attacked at will,
and designate them to be proxies of the Evil Empire, and then
you can defend yourself against them by attacking them. Libya,
for example, is perfect for this purpose. It has loose associations
with the Soviet Union. It's a minor actor in the world of international
terrorism. Against the background of anti-Arab racism, which is
rampant in the United States-it's the last legitimate form of
racism-you can easily talk about the Mad Dog and how he ought
to get down from the trees and all this kind of stuff; that works,
that scares people. Furthermore, if you can manage to elicit terrorism,
which some of our acts have done, that will really frighten people,
since that strikes at home. In fact, actual terrorism is very
slight; you're much more likely to be hit by lightning. But people
can get scared, and a confrontation with Libya is cheap. You can
kill Libyans at will; they can't fight back, it's a tiny, defenseless
country, we can beat them up every time we feel like it. It will
make people here feel that somehow our courageous cowboy leader
is defending us from these monsters who are going to destroy us,
most of which is a public relations concoction. In fact, throughout
the history of the Reagan administration there has been a sequence
of carefully concocted, fraudulent incidents created to give us
an opportunity to attack and kill Libyans, always for some specific
political purpose at home, like building up support for the rapid
deployment force, an intervention force in the Middle East or
gaining support for contra aid, or one thing or another. They're
very carefully timed, as I said; this is a public relations administration.
Their genius is manipulation of the public;. that's what they're
good at, and Libya is a perfect proxy of the Evil Empire, as I
say: you can kill them, you can attack them, you can bomb them,
people here can be frightened enough to think that they're somehow
being defended by these terrorist attacks. That way, if people
feel sufficiently embattled, they'll support these programs t
that they oppose. And they do. The spring of 1986, for example,
was a brilliant exercise in public relations-

DB: The bombing of Libya

NC: ... and the impact, the pretext for
it was fabricated. It was covered up by the media, which know
the true story but will not report it. It terrified the domestic
population-people wouldn't even go to Europe, they were so scared,
which is ludicrous, you're a hundred times as safe in any European
city as in any American city-but people were so terrified they
stayed at home. That's wonderful, because if you can terrify the
domestic population then they'll support things like Star Wars
or whatever lunacy comes along in the belief that you have to
defend yourself. Crucially, you can't have confrontations with
the Russians; they can fight back. So you've got to find somebody
you can beat up at will: Grenada, Libya, Nicaragua, anybody who
can't fight back, that's what you need. I should say, incidentally,
that this is understood very well abroad. When you read the foreign
press, they regularly comment on the thuggishness and the cowardice
of this administration, the sort of "bully on the block mentality":
you find somebody little enough to beat up and you go send your
goon squads to beat him up, that's essentially their style; but
here somehow people can't see it.

DB: This retail minor-actor terrorism
you've been talking about-when it's presented in the media it
occurs ahistorically: it has no context, it's totally irrational,
so it seems that the logical response would be one of loathing
and fear, and it's very effective.

NC: That's right. Most of the retail terrorism-what
is called "terrorism" in the United States-comes out
of Lebanon, and that started in 1982. It was a very marginal phenomenon
before that, a major phenomenon, mainly in Europe, after 1982;so
plainly something must have happened in 1982 to cause terrorism
to start coming out of Lebanon. Well, yes, something happened
in 1982: with enthusiastic American support, Israel attacked Lebanon.
The purpose of the Israeli attack was to demolish the civilian
society of the Palestinians so as to ensure Israeli control over
the West Bank, and in the process it also destroyed much of what
was left of Lebanon. Lebanon was left in ruins, the Palestinian
community was destroyed, and Lebanon, already in bad shape, got
the final blow. The United States supported it all the way. We
vetoed U.N. resolutions trying to stop the aggression, we supplied
Israel with arms, diplomatic support, the whole business, and
naturally it was perfectly predictable that that was going to
evoke international terrorism. You cut off every political option
for people and they are going to turn to terrorism. And I should
say that this was well understood in Israel. Here you can't talk
about it, because we're a much more indoctrinated country, but
in Israel, which is a more democratic society-at least for the
Jewish majority-this was openly discussed. For example, the current
prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, pointed out that there was a threat
to Israel from the Palestinians, but said it was a political,
not a military threat. The threat was that they would compel Israel
to enter into a political settlement that it didn't want, and
that had to be stopped. Israel's and perhaps the world's leading
specialist on the Palestinians, a professor at Hebrew University
named Yehoshua Porath, wrote an analysis shortly after the invasion,
a long, detailed article in Ha'aretz, Israel's major newspaper(kind
of like Israel's New York Times), in which he explained what he
thought, very plausibly, the invasion was about. He said, and
I'm paraphrasing: Look, here's the situation. For the last year,
the PLO has not engaged in any cross-border terrorism. Israel
has tried to get them to do it, we have continually bombed them
and murdered them and so on to try to evoke some response across
the border, but they haven't done it. They've kept discipline
despite the fact that we've bombed them, killing dozens of people
and so forth. This is a veritable catastrophe for the Israeli
leadership, since if the PLO continues to maintain this posture
of not engaging in cross-border terrorism and demanding a diplomatic
settlement, Israel might be driven to apolitical settlement, which
it does not want because in a political settlement it would have
to give up control of the occupied territories. What the Israeli
leadership wants is to return the PLO to much earlier days when
it engaged in random terrorism, a PLO that will hijack airplanes,
kill many Jews and be a source of loathing and horror throughout
the world. They don't want a peaceful PLO that refuses to respond
to Israeli terrorist attacks and insists on negotiation. That's
what the invasion will achieve.

Others also commented in the same way,
and that's a very plausible analysis. I presume that's what the
planners in the Reagan administration wanted, too. From their
point of view, terrorism coming out of Lebanon is very beneficial.
It frightens the American population; terrorist acts are indeed
loathsome, and if you cut people off from every possible option,
you can predict pretty well that that's what they're going to
do.